Work & Family Mailbox

Q:I'm planning summer activities and care for our three daughters, ages 14, 12 and 7. How do we organize a fun summer without breaking the bank?

—D.H., Philadelphia

A: Lower-cost programs usually fill up fast. The child-care information service in your area can refer you to school-age day camps and programs at YMCAs, community centers, park districts, museums, child-care chains and clubs. Some provide transportation and extended-day care. See www.philadelphiachildcare.org or call 888-461-5437 to talk to a counselor, who can mail you a list of programs. Elsewhere, see www.childcareaware.org and enter your ZIP Code.

See www.CampParents.org for programs accredited by the American Camp Association, which imposes up to 300 health, safety and programming standards; its database enables you to search 2,400 camps based on cost, location and activities. Median weekly fees are $182 for day camps and $390 for resident camps, says Peg Smith, the association's CEO; some offer sibling discounts. A list of summer activities also can be found at www.gocitykids.parentsconnect.com, by typing your city name in the search box.

I solved our summer-care challenge for a while by enrolling both my school-age children at a family child-care home; both enjoyed the small, mixed-age group and my older child learned some child-care skills by helping out. Some working parents form multi-family co-ops, staggering their vacations to take turns planning kids' activities week-by-week. To fill gaps, consider sharing a nanny with a neighbor, or hiring an energetic college student to oversee stimulating activities for your kids.

Q:I'm 65 and applying for new jobs. All the applications ask whether I'm a Vietnam veteran. Doesn't this set me up for age discrimination?

—J.S.

A: The employers are probably federal contractors that have been required, under regulations that are being phased out, to reach out to Vietnam veterans, says Matt Halpern, a Melville, N.Y., attorney and partner in charge of the affirmative-action practice at the law firm Jackson Lewis. See whether the application notes that the employer is an equal-employment opportunity or affirmative-action employer, or one that reaches out to minorities, females, the disabled and veterans (m/f/d/v). If so, answering should theoretically work to your advantage, Mr. Halpern says. If not, and if you haven't specifically been asked to respond to every question, you might leave it blank. Another route, says Joyce Glucksman, an Atlanta employment attorney, would be to cross out the words "Vietnam" and answer "yes" to being a veteran. New legislation, Mr. Halpern adds, will replace the requirement to support Vietnam veterans with one mandating support for veterans in general.

Q:You wrote that living in a Blue State reduces the odds of divorce. Democrats divorce at a lower rate than Republicans? I find that very difficult to believe.

—L.H., North Canton, Ohio

A: I can understand your skepticism. That was the context in which I mentioned this assertion; it's an example of how a correlation, or linkage, isn't the same as causation. Many of the states with high reported divorce rates did vote Republican in 2004, while Massachusetts, with a lower divorce rate, is decidedly Democratic.

But marriage researchers, including Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University, say the apparent Red-Blue distinction is more likely a function of well-documented nonpolitical factors. Having a college degree, for example, has been linked repeatedly in studies to a lower divorce rate, as has active participation in certain religious denominations. "The kind of people who live in Massachusetts -- well-educated, Catholic -- are the kind of people who tend to divorce less," Dr. Cherlin says. Also, marriage rates tend to be lower in Blue states, suggesting that couples who might eventually have divorced if they had gotten married are cohabitating instead. Finally, any state comparisons must be regarded with skepticism because good recent data are lacking. The federal government stopped collecting detailed state data on divorce in the mid-1990s.

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